Guggenheim Short-Lists 125 YouTube Videos

Check out the Guggenheim’s shortlist for their YouTube Play video art biennial here and peek our mini-sampler below. Apparently, banned nuditywas ok… as long as it was animated, avant-garde and WTF as hell.

Kudos to the Gug for short-listing Die Antwoord’s Zef Side and ImprovEverywhere’s Human Mirror, giving the zeitgeist-y, funny web hits some deserving “this is art” stamps. There a few videos in the bunch that any seasoned cruiser of the YouTubes would recognize and a few seem to be token picks to represent a certain trend/sub-genre (light painting, bit animation, etc). Yet, it’s fun stuff, so browse for yourself! And stay tuned here for fresher Vimeo Awards coverage.

The videos were plucked out of 23,000+ YouTube submissions from 91 countries (but not “Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Myanmar/Burma, Syria, Zimbabwe nor any other U.S.-sanctioned country”) and will be narrowed down to twenty by Takashi Murakami, Ryan McGinley, Darren Aronofsky and others.